Chandler resident Carol McDonald never imagined she would become an artist after retiring in 2018 from her “left-brain, analytical business administration career.” Over the years, she had taken a slew of art classes, but never thought of herself as “remotely artistic.” For Christmas in 2018, McDonald’s husband bought her an easel and a canvas and encouraged her to paint. She experimented with different paints, colors and textures and discovered that she enjoyed expressing herself through abstract art.
While working in her converted family room studio, McDonald listens to new age music and flamenco guitar “to get in the zone.” She sits at the easel four days a week, but doesn’t always complete her paintings right away. Sometimes a piece will come together in a week, and other times she’ll revisit a painting six months later to put on the finishing touches.
As she tackles a blank canvas, McDonald doesn’t have any preconceived notions about what she’s going to create, and has adopted the advice of one of her teachers: “Approach your paintings with reckless abandon.” For McDonald, that means throwing different colors of acrylic paints on the canvas (she often begins with a dark color), blending them and sometimes adding metallic elements or textured materials. Then, she’ll continue to paint and reevaluate. “I actually get the chills when I see something coming together,” she says.
Now a juried artist with the Sonoran Arts League, McDonald will be participating in this year’s Hidden in the Hills Artist Studio Tour (November 18-20 and November 25-27) for the first time, and she is a featured artist at Scottsdale’s On the Edge Gallery. Learn more at carolmcdonaldfineart.com.
